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2023 CADSTI-NE Intern and PETNA Scholar: Khahill Akil Richards
- Corie Bain
- Jul 21, 2024
- 2 min read
Source: CADSTI-NE Newsletter, November 2023
Khahill-Akil Richards
Second-year Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences major at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Ocular Therapeutix, Bedford, Massachusetts, USA
Khahill participated in a 10-week Product Development internship at Ocular Therapeutix. Ocular Therapeutix is a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in the treatment of eye diseases through an innovative hydrogel-based delivery system that provides sustained and localized drug delivery. Its products reduce the need for repeated manual application of ophthalmic drugs.Upon entering this internship, Khahill hoped to gain insights into the biopharmaceutical industry as well as learn more about technical operations, scale up and late-stage process development. Furthermore, as a biomedical engineering student, he hoped to better understand the various ways in which engineering is being used in the pharmaceutical field. Khahill was part of the Product Development team. He was also able to take on his own project, creating and designing a visual system to be used by the late-stage development as well as the manufacturing teams. While at the company, Khahill participated in various meetings, gaining insight into company-wide cross functionality.Khahill learned a wide range of new skills. His position on the Devices sub-team gave him access to SolidWorks as well as 3D printers, enabling him to learn about the design process and iteration. He was also able to acquire various laboratory skills such as cleanroom gowning, and working with an inert gas glove box and other apparatuses in a Good Manufacturing Practice setting. He learned several skills from other engineering disciplines such as wiring and grounding of electronic devices. The ability to meet with senior engineers and scientists allowed Khahill to gain insight into their career paths and the multiple opportunities in the biopharmaceutical field.At the end of the internship, he presented at the company town hall describing the work he had done including the system he created. Additionally, he gave a more in-depth presentation to his department detailing his accomplishments. Overall, this internship served as a great learning experience for Khahill. He gained skills across multiple engineering disciplines, and participated in and observed the application of STEM to developing products in an industry setting, all of which will be very useful in his future academic and career journey.
